[Buildroot] Buildroot maintainer and stable releases

Ulf Samuelsson ulf.samuelsson at atmel.com
Wed Jan 7 12:10:38 UTC 2009


ons 2009-01-07 klockan 12:28 +0100 skrev Peter Korsgaard:
> >>>>> "Ulf" == Ulf Samuelsson <ulf.samuelsson at atmel.com> writes:
> 
>  Ulf> but I had to disable SAMBA and STRACE and change to uCLibc-0.9.30
>  Ulf> since 0.9.29 does not compile for anything I tried.
> 
> Ok, why would you use 0.9.29 now 0.9.30 is out? Anyway, I'll do a
> 0.9.29 test compile in a moment.
> 
>  Ulf> I giess a new version of STRACE has probably been introduced
>  Ulf> and this broke the socat.XXX.patch.avr32 patches.
> 
> socat or strace?

sorry - strace.


> 
> It's probably caused by:
> 
> commit e3e68318e13e22e22c9619b24fc6dae1d8ac9e0a
> Author: jacmet <jacmet at 69ca8d6d-28ef-0310-b511-8ec308f3f277>
> Date:   Mon Oct 20 09:04:49 2008 +0000
> 
>     strace: bump version
>     
>     Fixes build with 2.6.27 kernel headers
> 
>  Ulf> HCE has a new AVR32 patchset in the Atmel fork, which 
>  Ulf> I hope to introduce soon.
> 
> Ok, but does it make sense when even HcE recommends people to use the
> Atmel fork instead?

Atmel Norway has come to the conclusion that since 
Builkroot does not have stable distributions
Atmel cannot rely on the main trunk.

That is a problem known to everyone, and
if this is fixed, then I see no reason for Atmel to maintain
its own fork.

It is not fixed by a system which has stable distributions
which are removed and replaced with another stable
distribution which breaks support for a number of systems.
Then distributions might be stable, but the system as a whole
is totally unstable, and unacceptable for professional use.

>  >> I haven't yet asked why this merge happens so rarely. Maybe lack of
>  >> time? OK, I'm already getting avr32-buildroot specific, but I think
>  >> updating the "devel" branch would be nice, even without testing
>  >> anything.  Currently the three branches "devel", "master" and
>  >> "atmel-2.3" are the same, pointing to the latest release.
> 
>  Ulf> Lack of time is the answer.
>  Ulf> The way it works is that HCE is doing the Atmel Branch
>  Ulf> and I am working on the main svn (even if HCE is providing
>  Ulf> patches from time to time).
> 
> With main svn you mean this tree? Maybe it would make more sense to
> keep the Atmel stuff in your own fork?

That is not my own fork, it is Atmel Norways fork.



>  >> > It's not the size in bytes as such, it's the special casing and
>  >> > (effectively) black box patches. Even when you test your changes on
>  >> > multiple archs there's a fairly big change that you break stuff for
>  >> > avr32/at91, or that you guys break it for the other archs. The same
>  >> > with moving packages to new versions or removing old versions, you
>  >> > cannot expect other people to forward port those arch specific
>  >> > patches.
> 
>  Ulf> That is why other systems like OpenEmbedded allow having more
>  Ulf> than one version of a package.
>  Ulf> A system that only allows a single version is really not useful.
> 
> Sorry, I disagree. Most packages only have a single version and that
> works fine. Almost everything under packages builds just fine on any
> sane architecture. Look at huge distributions like Debian with 18K+
> packages all building from the same sources on all archs.
> 
>  Ulf> A good system will allow buildroot to move to a 
>  Ulf> newer version for some architectures, while not
>  Ulf> breaking the build for other architectures.
> 
> I disagree. This is exactly what we SHOULDN'T do. We need to keep
> close to upstream and only provide the latest stable version (except
> for special situations) and work with upstream to fix problems if any.

Which will break architectures continously, so it will not allow
the use of Buildroot as more than a toy to introduce Linux
until people find something that really works.
 

> Anything else is just too much work with too little improvements going
> upstream.
> 

I do not disagree that we need to ensure that patches are fed upstream,
but the current way does not support working as a team project.
It is a single user system.

Since we have opposing views, then I think the rest of the 
people interested in maintaining buildroot, needs to 
also show their desires before any drastic actions in either
direction is taken.



Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson




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